Ubisoft's "always on" DRM has been defeated, according to a report on CNET, where they say a playable cracked version of Assassin's Creed II is now in the wild. All new Ubisoft PC games, including AC2, include internet-based validation that has caused problems playing games, but has been described by the publisher as "vital" to its business. It seems a little unusual for a mainstream site like CNET to post updates on pirated software, though Ubisoft's public denial of the previous report that their DRM was cracked has arguably set a precedent for this as a news topic. Thanks Joao.

Verno wrote on Apr 22, 2010, 09:14:I wouldn't call one month a success story for DRM either as AC2 wasn't exactly lighting the sales charts on fire during that period.

This DRM was not the only cause of this. Something about releasing it 4-5 months after consoles I think did more damage.

I didn't say the DRM was the cause. It's six months late and all of the advertising ended long ago, that's the whole point of why the DRM and piracy are red herrings in this context. Something like Settlers 7 can be reasonably analyzed whereas they've made it difficult at best to figure out reasonable potential gains and losses from this endeavor.

Not to mention ACI was also released way more late than ACII and it still topped the charts, not so with ACII.

As for the crack, a quick google to the usual suspect sites says that the crack is indeed 100%, nobody is having any problems whatsoever unlike SH5.

The text file in the crack is quite interesting though, the cnet site has a link to it.